April 27, 2010

Y chromosomes of Northwest China

I am not very surprised with the presence of J2 in Northwest China, as it was previously detected among Uyghurs of the region. My guess is that J2 was a major component of the eastward migrations of Indo-Iranians (in this case Iranic-speaking Sakas probably) and was later absorbed by the westward-moving Altaic groups that swept through the Eurasian heartland.

We urgently need ancient DNA to bridge the gap between the earliest Caucasoids to arrive at China (which included R1a1, but sample sizes are really too small to exclude the presence of other haplogroups), and the present-day populations where other lineages of West Eurasian origin are present.

J Hum Genet doi:10.1038/jhg.2010.30.

Y-chromosome distributions among populations in Northwest China identify significant contribution from Central Asian pastoralists and lesser influence of western Eurasians

Shou WH et al.

Abstract

Northwest China is closely adjacent to Central Asia, an intermediate region of the Eurasian continent. Moreover, the Silk Road through the northwest of China once had a vital role in the east-west intercommunications. Nevertheless, little has been known about the genetic makeup of populations in this region. We collected 503 male samples from 14 ethnic groups in the northwest of China, and surveyed 29 Y-chromosomal biallelic markers and 8 short tandem repeats (STRs) loci to reconstruct the paternal architecture. Our results illustrated obvious genetic difference among these ethnic groups, and in general their genetic background is more similar with Central Asians than with East Asians. The ancestors of present northwestern populations were the admixture of early East Asians peopling northwestward and later Central Asians immigrating eastward. This population mixture was dated to occur within the past 10 000 years. The J2-M172 lineages likely entered China during the eastward migration of Central Asians. The influence from West Eurasia through gene flows on the extant ethnic groups in Northwest China was relatively weak.

1 Dongxiang (DX - this is a population of Mongolic-speaking Muslims, most of whom live in southern Gansu)

1 Uzbek (WZB)

Haplogroup J in Northwestern China seems to be most common among the Uyghurs and the Uzbeks, who speak very similar Turkic dialects. The authors of this study also have found haplogroup J2 in their sample of the Eastern Iranic-speaking "Tajiks" in China, but the data of Wells et al. 2001 suggest that J2-M172 is probably not especially common in Southeastern Iranic-speaking ethnic groups. I have not seen any data that would support Dienekes' conjecture of a specifically Iranic-speaking medium for the propagation of J2-M172 in western China.

The Y-DNA pool of the Pamiris seems to be very similar to that of their close linguistic relatives, the Pashtuns, though R2-M124 seems to be more common among the Pamiris than among the Pashtuns, and the reverse for H1-M52. The Northeastern Iranic-speaking Yagnobis, on the other hand, seem to have unusually high frequencies of J2-M172 and R1-M173(xR1a1a-M17) for a Central Asian population.

Anyway, J2-M172 seems to be very common among all subgroups of Iranic speakers except the Southeastern Iranic-speaking peoples, i.e. the various Pashtun and Pamiri tribes, the latter of which include the only Iranic-speaking populations resident in the territory of the PRC at present (Sarikolis and Wakhis). All available evidence suggests that J2-M172 is more common among several Turkic populations, such as the Uyghurs and Uzbeks, than it is among the Southeastern Iranics. On the other hand, Northeastern Iranic speakers, i.e. Yagnobis and Ossetians, do have very high frequencies of J2-M172.

I have not seen any data that would support Dienekes' conjecture of a specifically Iranic-speaking medium for the propagation of J2-M172 in western China.

It's because Iranian-speakers in Central Asia are pitiful remnants of what they used to be a couple thousand years ago.

There are several good arguments why this is the case:

1. The presence of J2 among Indian Parsees at a very high frequency. As these are pre-Muslim Zoroastrians, they represent a relatively pristine Iranian gene pool.

2. J2 occurs pretty much in all Iranian-speaking groups, and is highly (relatively) representing in the related upper-caste Hindus.

3. In Central Asia we have the presence of Iranians, Turks, Mongols, and extinct Tocharians. There ia no reason to associate J2 with Altaic speakers (who came from the east). Tocharians, inasmuch as they arrived in the Bronze Age should be R1a1-dominated, and certainly too geographically limited to account for J2. Iranians are the likeliest vehicle for the dissemination of J2 in the area.

I do believe that J2 played a role in the Iranian people and their expansions, yet a secondary one in comparison to the R1a1a haplotype.

Its very unlikely that J2 was really important than the latter and I see little argument in that. Most likely the Indoeuropeans and Iranians alike were the product of a combination of local Eastern European/Central Asian people with Neolithic influence. First being, for Iranians, mostly R1a1a, latter mostly J2.

But overall the R1 component was more important. The higher caste Indians with J2 might be as well Neolithic Elamo-Dravidian people which made it up to the top of the new Aryan social order and not necessarily immigrants coming with the Central Asian core group.

Not talking about possible gendrift and regional differences, also the Indo-Iranians might have mixed in the Central Asian oasis regions already, where Neolithic farmers from the Near East were present.

So we probably should distinguish different Iranian speaking groups, steps and regions early on.

But overall the R1 component was more important. The higher caste Indians with J2 might be as well Neolithic Elamo-Dravidian people which made it up to the top of the new Aryan social order and not necessarily immigrants coming with the Central Asian core group.

That makes no sense, as "Neolithic Elamo-Dravidian people" wouldn't end up at the top of the caste hierarchy (as J2a has) but would be distributed throughout, or even at the bottom.

I do believe that the Indo-Iranians were a variable combination of J2a/R1a1 at their core; that makes the best sense.

I have read that J2 is connected with:-banana languages-sumerian-hurro-urartean-semitic-greek-iranian

The reality could be: J2 is connected with nostratic lislakh languages and expanded eastwards up to China, westwards up to France with middle eastern farmers that brought their language, culture and mythology with them.

This will explain many lexical and mythological parallels between semites, ie's, sumerians, caucasians, hindus, chinese...

Could we know the J2 age in China and does it fit with the Iranian expansion (from eastern Anatolia, see Mitannis) of 2000-2500 bc or is it much more earlier?

The rarity of J2-M172 in the Turkic-speaking Salar, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz populations in the PRC (though I recall that J2-M172 has been detected with low frequency in other samples of these same ethnic groups in previous studies - Wei Wang et al. 2003 have found it in about 10% of their Salar sample, for example) does seem to support Dienekes' supposition that this haplogroup should not have been important among the Turkic peoples in ancient times. However, his Iranic dissemination hypothesis is still not supported by anything but circumstantial evidence, and he has not elaborated it enough to explain how the hypothetically Iranic J2-M172 has come to be twice as common among the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and Uzbeks as it is among the Southeastern Iranic-speaking Tajiks in the PRC.

All peoples on earth are related but very often wars and massacres are implicating close brothers/ethnies (ww1 in europe and middle east, israel/palestine conflict, iran-iraq war, iran-koweit war, lebanon war etc...)

ie speaking Iranians are culturally and genetically very similar to semitic speaking Iraqis, Assyrians, Akkadians...

Uyghurs are know to have assimilated the prior Tocharian (Indo-European) language speaking Tarim basin population in the historic era (around the 9th century). Tocharian languages were closer to Hittite than than it is to Indo-Iranian linguistically.

The material culture of the Tarim bain population that was assimilated by the Uyghurs dates to around 1800 BC, and Tarim basin mummies show the West Eurasian genetic element in that population (with more West Eurasian contributions in the patriline than in the matriline).

J2 generally is strongly associated with Indo-European influences elsewhere and is also associated with the Anatolian region with linguistic links to Hittite people that appear in the same era might spread to them over a period of contact before contact is lost (probably no later than 1200 BC when the Hittite empire falls apart).

Physical anthropology also supports a closer link to the Hittites than the Indo-Iranian Indo-European peoples, and to the hypothesis that this link was maintained until around 1200 BC when the Hittite empire fell apart.

See, e.g., a craniometric investigation cited on the September 26, 2003 post on this blog that notes that the Tarim basin people were closer to East Mediterraneans than to Iranians, and that assimilation with neighboring peoples dates to around 1200 BC, which just happens to be the date of Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean.

"Eight craniometric variables from 25 Aeneolithic and Bronze Age samples, comprising 1,353 adults from the Tarim Basin, the Russo-Kazakh steppe, southern China, Central Asia, Iran, and the Indus Valley, are compared to test which, if either, of these hypotheses are supported by the pattern of phenetic affinities possessed by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Craniometric differences between samples are compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity are assessed with two types of cluster analysis (the weighted pair average linkage method and the neighbor-joining method), multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis. Results obtained by this analysis provide little support for either the steppe hypothesis or the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Rather, the pattern of phenetic affinities manifested by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin suggests the presence of a population of unknown origin within the Tarim Basin during the early Bronze Age. After 1200 B.C., this population experienced significant gene flow from highland populations of the Pamirs and Ferghana Valley. These highland populations may include those who later became known as the Saka and who may have served as middlemen facilitating contacts between East (Tarim Basin, China) and West (Bactria, Uzbekistan) along what later became known as the Great Silk Road. . . . This study confirms the assertion of Han ([1998]) that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations."

A fabric analysis of the Tarim basin Mummies, shows that although they wore plaid/tartan, the particular style was similar to that of the North Caucasus region. The yalso seem to have brought sheep/goats with them, and been primarily herders.

Their language Tocharian A/B though shows most similarities to Gothic and Celtic groups. It's interesting that some language etymologists link the word roots GAL-, HAL- and SAL- together, and speculate that some of the early Celtic speakers were involved in Salt Mining and/or Salt Miners/Traders.

The original HAL-statt culture, was located in SAL-zburg (Salt Mountain), and the huge salt mines of Southern Poland were mined by GAL-icians. Of course the Tocharians inhabited the Tarim basin which is basically salt flats. Most of the mummies are so well preserved because of the salt.

The proto-Indo-Iranians were of Abashevo/Timber-Grave/Andronovo origin - so basically, North/Central/East Europeans with loads of R1a1. Anthropology confirms this, as do pigmentation genetic traits obtained from Andronovo mummies.

But after these groups entered Central Asia, they dominated and assimilated all sorts of people. I've read that the Saka of the Pamirs were of Indo-Afghan appearance, and thus clearly different from the North/Central/East Euro type Andronovo folk. So even though I would caution against making correlations between Y-DNA haplogroups and cranial traits, in this case it does seem to fit. It's likely that the Indo-Afghan type Saka of the Pamirs were indeed largely J2.

[Compare the "Khojant" Tajik data of Wells et al. 2001 with the "Penjikent" Tajik data of Zerjal et al. 2002: they appear to have tested the same sample, but there are discrepancies in the results of the genotyping of the M48 SNP for one of the individuals and in the descriptions of the sampling location.]Tajik/Penjikent, Tajikistan (Zerjal et al. 2002)2/22 = 9.1% P-92R7(xR1a1-SRY1532.2)1/22 = 4.5% BT-SRY1532.1(xC-M130, DE-YAP, H2-Apt, J-12f2, K-M9)14/22 = 63.6% R1a1a-M172/22 = 9.1% J-12f21/22 = 4.5% L-M20 [Note another discrepancy, this one within the paper by Zerjal et al. 2002: this individual is Hg28=L-M20 according to the data in Table 3, but he is Hg26=K-M9(xL-M20, N1-LLY22g, O1-MSY2.2, LY1, P-92R7) according to the pie chart in the map in Figure 2.]2/22 = 9.1% C3c-M48

Wells' sample sizes are quite small, and there are some discouraging discrepancies with Zerjal et al. 2002, but these data do suggest that the Persian-speaking Tajik population is heterogeneous, with R1a1a-M17 being much more strongly represented than J2-M172 in the population of Khojant?/Penjikent?, J2-M172 being more strongly represented than R1a1a-M17 in the population of Dushanbe, and both R1a1a-M17 and J2-M172 being rather equally represented in the population of Samarkand. Overall, J2-M172 seems to be more common among the lowland Persian-speaking Tajiks than among the highland Pamiris, so I do not know why Polak would think that "[i]t's likely that the Indo-Afghan type Saka of the Pamirs were indeed largely J2."

But the Afanasievo/Andronovo groups heavy in R1a1 were at some point joined by southwest Asian-like tribes south of the main steppe zone. That's probably where the J2 comes from, and its presence both in the Tajik lowlands and Pamirs testifies to that.

"the Afanasievo/Andronovo groups heavy in R1a1 were at some point joined by southwest Asian-like tribes south of the main steppe zone. That's probably where the J2 comes from, and its presence both in the Tajik lowlands and Pamirs testifies to that".

That seems the most logical solution to me. I'm reasonably sure that J2 spread with the Neolithic, or with traders assocciated with it.

"That makes no sense, as 'Neolithic Elamo-Dravidian people' wouldn't end up at the top of the caste hierarchy (as J2a has) but would be distributed throughout, or even at the bottom".

That's not necessarily so. It's unlikely that the incoming Indo-European-speaking people destroyed the whole Neolithic upper class. Most invasions and revolutions have only altered the very top echelon, and the old guard often rapidly reasserts itself. That's not to say that J2 was not common in Southeastern Iran in pre-Turkish times.

"he has not elaborated it enough to explain how the hypothetically Iranic J2-M172 has come to be twice as common among the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and Uzbeks as it is among the Southeastern Iranic-speaking Tajiks in the PRC".

Perhaps the Mongol genocide was more effective in Southeastern Iran than it was further north.

That's not necessarily so. It's unlikely that the incoming Indo-European-speaking people destroyed the whole Neolithic upper class. Most invasions and revolutions have only altered the very top echelon, and the old guard often rapidly reasserts itself. That's not to say that J2 was not common in Southeastern Iran in pre-Turkish times.

Acquiring admixture from the "Neolithic upper class" in the form of J2a is possible. But, the problem is that this admixture would not be limited to the upper class: lower-class Neolithic people would also possess J2a and they would mix with lower-class "Indo-European speaking people".

For your scenario to work it would require either:

(1) two populations meeting but intermarrying only at the upper class levels

or

(2) two populations meeting but one of them already having class genetic structure. Nothing about Neolithic society suggests that this was the case.

R1a, caucasian race, eye colouring mutation and hair coloring mutation all arose in middle east not north Europe and they colonised Europe and central Asia from the middle east, as a consequence to agriculture discovery and the consequent demographic explosion (seeking new pastures, arable lands and mines).

Why so scandinavians (whether ie or uralic speaking) and north russians have so large amount of blonds and colored eyes is due to natural selection as caucasoid middle eastern colonising northern Europe with fair hair underwent a positive selection (since black haired middle easterners were easily located and killed by predators such as bears in the snowy grounds of northern Europe).

The increasing of the number of blondes (already present but in lesser amounts and somehow with different looking) amongst southern Europeans is due to middle age "barbarian" invasions (goths, rus...) that resulted in the dark ages(although later the renaissance occured thanks to greco-italian-anadalusians and central europe semites) and the rising of racism and nationalism (that shows its peack in ww1 and ww2).

Thus blondes in Anatolia and middle east are autochtonous locals and have different lookings than nordic blondes ( for example your brother me even I'am blonde I look different than finnish blondes).

I'm not talking about blonds of the Middle East and the Caucasus, who do exist in small numbers. I'm talking about the prevailingly light haired and light eyed groups from Northern and Eastern Europe who migrated to Asia during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and even a bit earlier, carrying lots of R1a1.

Here are some quotes from a recent paper that you might have missed...

"Whereas archaeological records are inconclusive about the anthropological traits characteristic of ancient Siberians, our data deduced from the analysis of human pigmentation gene SNPs seems consistent with the fact that most of them had blue (green) eyes. ... Our dataalso suggest that south Siberian specimens might have had blond or light brown hair and fair skin and that they were of European ancestry, a result which appears as evident as those of uniparental markers.

...

We also showed for the first time that Bronze and Iron Ages south Siberian populations displayed “European” physical appearance, thus corroborating physical anthropological records. Another conclusion that can tentatively be inferred from the data presented here is that the Andronovo culture might be the eastern spread of the Kurgan culture and might be related to Tocharian speakers in the Tarim Basin."

@ Ashraf : "eye colouring mutation and hair coloring mutation all arose in middle east not north Europe"

You have no evidence of that. To me it clearly appeared in the hunter-gatherers of Europe, and the presence of these characteristics in Asia/Near-east/north Africa is because of subsequent migrations (Indo-europeans mostly but not only, it might sometimes be from earlier movements as well - like in north Africa).

"north russians have so large amount of blonds and colored eyes is due to natural selection as caucasoid middle eastern colonising northern Europe with fair hair underwent a positive selection"

In so little time? ... doubtful. The Nordic phenotype is a whole package and it doesn't look much middle-east-like.

"Thus blondes in Anatolia and middle east are autochtonous locals and have different lookings than nordic blondes ( for example your brother me even I'am blonde I look different than finnish blondes)"

What do you expect? mixing as minorities , how would they not look more like the local norm? That being said there are Anatolian, near-east, Asian peoples that actually look a lot like Europeans from the north half of Europe, even if it's rare (as expected).

I have read that colored eye mutation arose in Zagros mountains and that fair hair arose after the discovery of agriculture in middle east.

indo-europeans homeland is Anatolia (in the konya plain-çatal höyük, Bernal 2006-you can also read colin renfrew and vyacheslav ivanov)most archaic ie language is hittite autochtonous to southern anatolia, and if we exclude hittitesecond and third most archaic ie branches are armenian and indo-aryan mitannis whose homeland is eastern anatolia and not northern Europe.Blondism amongst middle easterners (whtether semite, ie or altaic speaking) is a local autochtonous feature (that can be seen in the mountainous isolated and endogamousareas of such remote regions as Yemen)but of course historical northern migrations brought subsequent numbers of blonds to middle east (similarly to southern Europe).

To know more about anatolia being the proto ie homeland you can read my threads here below:

Hittite is the oldest written IE language, but its not archaic by Indo-European standards.

Also, like I just said, there's very clear evidence of migrations from Europe across the Urals to Asia. Graves from sites linked to these migrations contained people with R1a1 and loads of certain pigmentation genotypes that only occur at such levels in North/Central/East Europe.

So Anatolia isn't an option as far as these R1a1 groups are concerned. It might be a source of other tribes who went east, maybe carrying J2 etc. but we don't really know, because there's no ancient DNA evidence like there is to prove the R1a1 movements across the north.

If it's adressed to me, nothing of what I said goes against what you said. The R1a1a IE population (as I do believe the Kurgan theory is likely correct, even though I still keep some doubts) had such characteristics as well but I think they probably gained it through mixing with hunter-gatherers + selections during milleniums. I doubt these R1a1a are the "origin" of the nordic phenoytype, originally. Maybe things were more complicated than what I said about the old population of European hunter-gatherers but I do think the R1a1a were not the unique source of these characteristics.

"Hittite is the oldest written IE language, but its not archaic by Indo-European standards."

He has some archaic features like the animate/inanimate words (instead of genders + neutral). It wasthe firs to leavethe homeland, it's actually even theorized it left before the birth of proto-IE.

@ Ashraf : I don't believe Anatolia is the homeland of proto-IE language. Even Tokharian tends to prove the Kurgan Theory IMO. The fact that the eastern IE language (Tokharian) resembles more the western ones (Celtic, Germanic Italic, etc...) is well explained by a seperation at a somewhat similar time. And it so happens that in the north half of Europe we have the Globular amphora culture and the Corded ware culture roughly between 3,500-3,000 BC and in Central Asia/south Siberia/Mongolia, we have the Afanasevo culture roughly at the same time, a culture that have similarities with the Ukrainian cultures of the time (think Yamnaya),like the sepultures. That's why Tokharian is closer of the western IE languages rather than the much closer IE Asian languages that are Indo-iranians. Indo-iranians are the result of later migrations, the language was at an ulterior stage. Again, at this later stage we have migrations at a similar time : proto-Indo-iranian eastwards around 2,500-2,000 BC and proto-greek south-westwards (and other branches like Armenian or Thracian-Dacian (maybe from a later migration as appparently they were satem)), that has similarities with Indo-iranian (they separated before satemization of course).

The north of the black sea really seem to be the center of gravity of the IE languages.

"indo-aryan mitannis whose homeland is eastern anatolia"

The Mitannis' Indo-iranian elite was linked to horse and chariot and these things are found first in the steppes not far from the Urals. Also the large presence of Indo-iranian words from many stages of Indo-iranians in the Finno-ugric languages (including very old loanwords) tends to support the Indo-iranian urheimat as close to south russia/north-west Kazakhstan.

"You have no evidence of that. To me it clearly appeared in the hunter-gatherers of Europe, and the presence of these characteristics in Asia/Near-east/north Africa is because of subsequent migrations"

Why Anatolia most likely should be the pie homeland?-Semitic&, Kartvelian&Caucasian loanwords into proto indo european-Anatolia has a geographical landscape that fits well with proto indo european words (boat, narrow rivers, honey, wheat, corn birch, panther...)-anatolia was overpopulated due to neolithic revolution (göbekli tepe, çatal höyük...) whereas pontic steppes were very scarcely populated (ayway those steppes were populated by migrants from middle east)-caucasoid phenotype origin is the middle east-R1a, R1a1a, R1b, E1b, J2, G2 and perhaps I hg's homeland is anatolia-fertile crescent-first wheels, carts and chariots were developped in fertile crescent (5000 bc for wheels and 3600 bc for carts and not pontic steppes) and they have Semitic etymoloy (agal) and Sumerian parallel (gir) [Bernal 2006]-the closest language family to indo-european is north afro-asiatic (both morphologically and lexically) -most archaic ie branch is the anatolian one-anatolian branch is autochtonous to southern central anatolia (to their west lived the pelasgians-then greeks, to their north nw caucasian speaking khattis, to their south semites and to their east hurri and ie speaking mitannis)-indo-aryan branch homeland is eastern anatolia (mitannis)-armenian's (which is the most arhcaic ie branch after anatolian) homeland is eastern anatolia-tocahro-germanic homeland is north-eastern Anatolia (Ivanov&Gamkrelidze identified Tocharians with Anatolian Gutians)-common indo-european/semitic mythology (apollo=sun/belu,baal,hubal,lahab=flame diana,athina/tanit,neth,tina- ahura mazda/atra samain, ses/shesh, sept/sabt,star/ishtar etc...)-proto ie's "copied" their numerals from proto berbero-semito-egyptians [Blazek] (or at least 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,10)1 jeden/iden=lonely2 dwa/taw=twin3 tri/tle=triplet (ie triple twin)4 ketwor/arb(season) do not fit but we have anatolian mou=45 pank/kap(fist) by metathesis6 seks/sis7 sept/sabt(index finger)8 oktm/samn by satemization9 is a proto ie innovation and means initially new (taboo not to say the number of pregnancy months ie 9)and again this pie number has no reflex in Anatolian branch10 dak/as Besides that armenian (2.nd most archaic ie branch) lacks many reflexes of pie numbers, here below Armenian numbers:1 mek2 yerku3 yerek4 chorss5 hing (similar to proto semitic hams)6 vets7 yote8 oot9 eeneh -proto ie's "copied" their words for animals, wheel, cart, agriculture, home, boat, town [Ivanov&Gamkrelidze] etc... from proto berbero-semito-egytians.-from all world languages ie and berber-egyptian-semitic lanuages has the pecularity of (Bernal 2006):*apophony*article*gender*dual pronouns*triconsonantal roots*inflectionBesides common roots/loans (more than 800 according to Linus Brünner)and initial SOV morphology.

I wasted my money buying "the wheel, the horse and the language" a book so simplistic, weak, and empty that even college students can write more convincing books.Anyway, this book-ironically-do confirm "out of Anatolia" hypothesis.

You could also have added that the main IE divinity, the thundering god fighting a giant snake is also found in a close form among some Afro-asiatic populations (as Baal/haddad) and apparently even in Nubt (Naqada) in north of upper Egypt prior to 3,000 BC (set and Apopis), or that swastikas that are often associated with IE are found in what are considered pre-IE civilisations in the Kurgan hypothesis (Vinca signs of the Balkans or in the Indus Valley civilisation seals around 2,500 BC).

Cultural elements can be absorbed. For instance the swastika is found among the the Basque culture (Lauburu) and the root for city "ur(b?)" is also present in their language IIRC, proving that these things crossed the language/culture barrier at one point or another. As such it's not a decisive evidence, unless you're telling me the origin of the Basques is in Anatolia or maybe the Balkans. There was a cultural diffusion from the east. There were migrations from middle-east/Asia minor in Europe, that's a certitude. That doesn't mean they imported the proto-IE language with them, but they could still have transmitted some words and cultural elements to the people they met.

If the origin of the IE languages was Anatolia, then it would be more about some proto-proto-IE than proto-IE anyway, for what I understand (the more recent Renfrew pattern is of that sort, IIRC).

It seems pretty clear that J2 was the core of neolithic diffusion but what language did they speak, we don't know. Do what is known of them look similar to later IE cultures? Not much it seems.

Concerning the chariot, it's actually in the steppes (sintashta-petrovska, IIRC), untill the contrary is proven.And the earliest well-dated depiction of a wheeled vehicle (a wagon—four wheels, two axles), is actually on the Bronocice pot, a circa 3500–3350 BC clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker culture settlement in southern Poland. There's also the Cucuteni-Trypillian cow-on-wheels of 3950-3650 B.C and the oldest wheel might also be in Slovenia around 5,000 BC (*). It's not as clear as you say.

Evidences for all these hgs ? Even if it were true how is that a proof of the location of the birth of proto-IE? Isn't proto-IE considered as appearing during chalcolithic or early bronze age by most of the specialists? How old is proto-IE in your mind? The repartition of most of these haplogroups in Europe is pretty polarized. If they were all coming from Anatolia in the timeframe of the alleged apparition of proto-IE, the European haplogroups repartition (and the Anatolian as well actually) would look differently, I think.

- "anatolian branch is autochtonous to southern central anatolia".

You don't know that. Prove me your psychic power first.

- "indo-aryan branch homeland is eastern anatolia (mitannis)"

That's simply wrong. The Mitanni was Hurrian-speaking. The elite was using some early stage Indo-iranian words though. You still have to explain how comes that _early_ stage Indo-iranian words entered Finno-ugric languages en masse.

First depictions of real carts, wheels and chariots (and not the polish graffiti that can be very broadly interpreted-and besides that I can bring older such "motifs of carts and chariots" from even 5000 bc Libyan desert**http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,634561,00.jpg(btw 3500 bc carts in polan would not be ie but pre ie) But depictions is not so important as material proofs as the first wheels, carts and chariots were found in the middle east.

Of course, very probably Basque (and more accurately Aquitanian or perhaps Aquitano-Iberian or even Aquitano-Ibero-Tartessian) ultimate origin is from Anatolia as it's most likely connected to one (or all) of the 3 caucasian languages (5 with khatii and hurro-urartean).

Anatolian speaking Anatolians are autochtonous to southern Anatolia as there is no discontinuity and no attested western movement, besides all Anatolian speaking Anatolians occupied the southern part of central Anatolia and have as neighbors : the non ie pelasgians in the west, the non ie khattis in the north, the non ie hurrians in the east.****http://dnghu.org/anatolian-languages-map.jpg

There are dozens of peoples, and languages that habitated Anatolia and middle east, why is it so strange to think of distinct language families cohabitating in Anatolia as Hurrians, Gutians, Mitannis.(btw hurrian share some words and grammatical features with mitanni and ie, it's more likely an intermediate language between ibero-caucasian and lislakh,eurasiatic,nostratic,ie)You can see Aryan and mitanni migration from Anatolia to India,central asia,Iran.******http://www.imninalu.net/Myths_files/migrations_01.jpg(suggestfuly Iranic branch is older and more diverse than Indic and some Iranic languages such as zazaki,kirmanji and ossetian have very archaic features)

"That's simply wrong. The Mitanni was Hurrian-speaking. The elite was using some early stage Indo-iranian words though."

I've read that closest language to Germanic branch is the Tocharian one (using the Swadesh's method).

"the elite was using..." is a cliche unproved affirmation (a mere suggestion or even fantasy)and still the picture is not very clear and we need further historico-linguistical studies(and also a complete study of R1a similar to the one of R1b)

I dont see how this contradicts the indo-aryan homeland being eastern Anatolia, Astrakhan region is not very distant from eastern Anatolia.

Also I want to add that it seems that first topographic names and locations in southern central Anatolia are Anatolian whereas the ones further north are Hattic (Caucasian) but still deeper researches are lacking.

As for absorbtion of cultural elements you are right, for example we have semito-egyptian-berber sits (6) similar to ie sweks (6) [Hebrew shesh, Sanskrit shash...] and we know that "god made the world in 6 days and reposed the 7 th day" but 7 too is common to ie and semitico-egyptian-berber [kushitic and omotic numbers are very different from north afrasan] as we have pie septm and ps sabt [arabic sabt, italian sabato, hebrew shabat=saturday].I take this from Bernal 2006 (this is really a "strong" book)The etymology of 7 is connected with index finger (7th finger) as in semitic sababa=index finger, more oddly from the same root we have the semitic sabbah which means pray god and muslims during the "ibrahamic pray" twist their index finger (the 7th) when they recite the tasbih part!

I forget to add that another common north afrasian/pie feature is that both language families share laryngeal sets.

Ashraf: The history of IE languages in Anatolia and Greece is quite well documented. We know that the second Hittite city (Kadesh), after which the Hittites named themselves (they called it Nesa; the dating and location of the first Anatolian city, Kussara, is less certain, but not many generations earlier and probably within a hundred miles of Kadesh) was captured by the Hittite king Pithan in 1754 BCE, and the subsequent conquests of Anatolia and interactions of the Hittites of non-IE language speaking people (Hurrians, Hattites, Semites, Egyptians, Kaskians, etc.) is historically documented. Non-IE language speaking populations are well documented historically at the time of Hittite emergence in Anatolia at least as far as the vicinity Anatolian-Caucuses border based on the language of the cities conquered by the Hittites who between 1754 BC and 1321 BCE had expanded from two cities to reach all of East and Central Anatolia reaching to the upper Euphrates Valley in all areas which are part of modern Syria.

We also have a pretty good date for the replacement of the non-IE speaking Minoans by the IE speaking Myceneans in Crete (around 1400 BC), and that they were in the mainland earlier and migrated there from the North, not from the neighboring West Anatolia. The Myceneans are on the Statem side of the Statem-Centem divide in the IE languages.

Very strong circumstantial evidence that is well dated for the appearance of Indo-Aryans in India around 1900 BC (e.g. the Cemetary H in North Pakistan and textual evidence from the Rig Veda and Avesta) supports the textual evidence.

We also know from evidence of the records of the Hittites and neighboring Mesopotamian civilizations more or less exactly when an Indo-Aryan speaking elite that worshipped Rig Vedic gods not part of the Hittite pantheon came into power in the Mittani state which had a Hurrian speaking non-elite (sometime 1550 BC to 1460 BC) which is several hundred years after the archeological indicators of Vedic culture in South Asia and several hundred years after the 2004 BC formation of the Kassite Empire that the Mittani superceded. The treatise on horses in Hittite by a Mittani author that uses many Mittani elite loan words make pretty clear that by ca. 1500 BC the gap between Centem languages like Hittite and Statem languages like that of the Mittani elite was well established.

Greek-Armenian isoglosses suggest that the two languages are particularly closely related. This could be an ancient connection, but there is also historical evidence to suggest that Armenian is a descendant of the Phrygian language first attested in 800 BC, that could have crossed Anatolia after the collapse of the Hittite empire in 1200 BC.

Waggg: The combination of historical and archeological evidence puts Celtic's spread starting around 700 BC, provides little or no evidence of Italic languages at most a few hundred years before then, and shows Germanic languages start expanding out of Southern Scandinavia around 750 BC. The Balto-Slavic language are much later than these in most of Europe (Slavic's main expansion is around 600 AD and is only a few hundred years at most behind the Uralic language expansion). Tocharian is only attested in writing from around the 6th century AD but Tarim mummies and Chinese historical evidence makes a good case that it dates to 1800 BC or earlier. There is no historical or archeological evidence that any IE languages (or Uralic languages for that matter) were widely spoken anywhere in Western or Central Europe prior to Bronze Age Collapse (and the fall of the Hittite empire) around 1200 BC (an event dated to within a decade from continuous Egyptian records). The fact that Neo-Hittite, Germanic, Celtic and Italic languages along with Hittite and Tocharian are on the Centem side of the IE divide, while Greek, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Aryan (also the language of the Mitanni elite), and Iranian languages were on the Statem side, makes a fairly good circumstancial argument that the split is 1800 BC or earlier and given the widely different dates of appearance that the European Centem languages are descended from Hittite (probably from a Bronze Age Collapse diaspora of Hittite speakers) or Tocharian (via the Central European plains) or a combination of the two.

1/it's a fact that Mitanni inscriptions are not early than 1700 bc, but (as other "uneducated" folks such as kassites and lulubbys) it could very well be assumed that they existed in Anatolia much older than the date of their first attestation, and simply emerged from their mountainous area at some point, similar case could be said for the hittites who could have been "outside educated world" (as they were located further west than northern mesoptamia).

It's suggestive that Iranic branch is older and much diverse than indic one.

Also the kassites could be an early indo-aryan folk.

2/The folks of the pie homeland in Konya plains did not speak hittite but an older form of indo-hittite.

The short paper here below (6 pages) could be interesting as the proto indo-european homeland problem.

Hittites weren't the only ones documenting the Mittani developments. The Mesopotamians were too and were closer, and the Mittani empire didn't go very far into the mountainous area. The case of Kassites as Indo-Aryans is very unlikely as we know what languages they imposed on the Akkadians when they took over and it wasn't an IE language.

Iranic diversity may be a product of a mountainous terrain rather than greater age. The less travel there is between areas, the more they diversify in language. The Indic region was unified around the Indus and Ganges River routes with gentle valleys until quite late.

There is a case for a somewhat older Hittite start date than 1754 BC. One that is attractive is the date of the first iron production not far from Kanesh. But, a few hundred years older in one city-state doesn't say much and the Hittites of Kanesh would have claimed more if they could (kingship is all about bragging rights back then). Any way you cut it, the Hittite population as of 2000 BC is very small. And, you have to explain where the quite linguistically different Proto-Greeks come from through a lot of hostile territory, the long way around the Black Sea.

Also FWIW, Fournet's paper isn't very impressive. He fails to get the motive behind Pontic-Caspian expansion (superior technology in horse warfare makes defeating other societies easier). For a really good motive that may a significant piece of at least the Satem side of the puzzle, one can get a much better reason: the Satasvati River dried up to the point that it became incapable of supporting food production around 2000 BC, the associated villages folded (with successor civilizations of Painted Ware starting new villages in the middle of the beds of the former river) and the large number of food producing people who lived there had to find someplace new to live.

His argument about goats and sheep words in Italo-Celtic and Germanic being different as a case for pre-goat and sheep PIE is also off. Those language branches weren't widely dispersed until several thousands of years after goats and sheep were established in those places. The argument that there was no PIE word for horses is similarly off (as is the notion that the horse is not a domesticated animal).

@ Andrew Oh-Willeke : I know what I said is not directly proven, I just claimed that it seems to fit well in a clear well-established pattern. On the other hand, you'll have a hard time convincing me IE spread has anything to do with a Hittite diaspora from Anatolia.

@ Ashraf :

- "chariots from 5000 bc Libyan desert"

Where did you see that? If it were true the Egyptians wouldn't have waited for the Hyksos to get it.

- "3500 bc carts in polan would not be ie but pre ie"

It doesn't change a thing, it makes it possible in adjacent regions.

- "depictions is not so important as material proofs"

Of course they are. It's all about eyesight, not imagination.

- "Anatolian speaking Anatolians are autochtonous to southern Anatolia as there is no discontinuity and no attested western movement"

On the contrary, there are archeological prooves of destructive population movements from the west.

About Mitanni and Iranic : Mitanni was Hurrian-speaking, it's well documented. There is no proof of any Indo-aryan presence besides a few words and names of Indo-aryan gods. And Iranic is generally considered more recent than Indic which I fully agree with.

- "Also I want to add that it seems that first topographic names and locations in southern central Anatolia are Anatolian"

I've read things quite different about it.

Look, I need more than a few parallels with Afro-asiatic which I don't know how accepted they are by the specialists. Even the thunder god I mentionned is not that decisive, after all they're still different from each others and other explanations than an ancient common origin is still thinkable and other explanations as well, I guess. Same for the swastika thing, you can still allege some IE input (linked to the kurgan theory) for example, it's not like this symbol is all over the place, in the cultures I mentionned.

You rely too much on a few elements and don't bother much about how it fits in the general picture, you don't consider much neither archeology nor cultural continuity. For instance, horse was a central element in the IE culture, and the word for it is ubiquitous in the IE languages, and yet it was basically absent in Anatolia (a region packed with non-IE languages) untill bronze age, if I'm not mistaken, while the proto-IE seems to raise from the chalcolithic time.

I agree with much of what you said in your first part, but I think IE is much older (around Funnelbeaker) in Europe than what you state. By the time Greece became IE, all the main European IE subfamilies had already developed.

Also, ...shows Germanic languages start expanding out of Southern Scandinavia around 750 BC is a very antiquated view. Yes, there was a cultural divide between the south (below the Mittelgebirge, Celtic) and the Nordic north, which is well-attested by thousands of finds. However, (i) we still don't have sufficient evidence that the south east of the Rhine actually spoke a Celtic language, and (ii) many researchers today agree that the north of Germany (including at least part of the central Mittelgebirge) and surrounding regions (Netherlands, parts of Belgium, large parts of Poland) were Germanic speaking or even proto-Germanic long before any Scandinavian tribes moved south.

For example, there is no evidence that the Jastorf culture (that is located in the above region) is of Scandinavian origin - in fact, it has lots of influence from Hallstadt and La Tene, as one would expect. Likewise, the Przeworsk culture in today's Poland was very likely Germanic speaking.

From the continuity of cultures, it seems that that the north of Germany down to at least the Mittelgebirge has been Germanic for over 3,000 years. Germanic has also been attested around and south of the Danube by 2,000 years ago - but that is just a lower limit. That area could have been widely (proto-) Germanic speaking long before then.

Eurologist, which mittelgebirge (it is a geographical term of German origin) do you mean? There are many mittelgebirges in Germany (and in the rest of the world).

Andrew, Greek (including Mycenean Greek) is a Centum language (with marginal Satem features). The rest of your Centum-Satem classification of IE languages seems to be correct. Also the Centum-Satem split seems to be much older than you suggest and the emergence of the European Centum languages has apparently nothing to do with Hittite or Tocharian dispersals. Btw, the non-Hittite name of Nesa was Kanesh (Kanes), not Kadesh (an ancient Levantine city far from Anatolia).

On the contrary, there are archeological prooves of destructive population movements from the west. About Mitanni and Iranic : Mitanni was Hurrian-speaking, it's well documented. There is no proof of any Indo-aryan presence besides a few words and names of Indo-aryan gods. And Iranic is generally considered more recent than Indic which I fully agree with.

I think you agree with me that carts and chariots were found and depicted in middle east much before ie migrations (if you agree with the pontico-caspian theory).There are swastikas too (and cart like graffitis)in jamdat naser and even in America, it's not so important as it's a mere decorative motive, also I think you agree that the 5000 bc cart like depiction in Libyan desert is by far more convincing than the Polish one.Egyptians were very consevative towrds exterior influences (unless you invade them), anyway they borrow carts from the invading semite hyksos not the ie hittites.

There is no big literature of Mitanni (similarly as kassite,gutian,lulubbys etc...) simply because they were "not educated"/emerged lately...

Destructive population movements from the west are of the sea peoples and much more late.

His argument about goats and sheep words in Italo-Celtic and Germanic being different as a case for pre-goat and sheep PIE is also off. Those language branches weren't widely dispersed until several thousands of years after goats and sheep were established in those places. The argument that there was no PIE word for horses is similarly off (as is the notion that the horse is not a domesticated animal).

How you then explain that the pie words for animals are shared/borrowed from Afro-Asiatic, if the pie homeland is in pontic steppes and also how you explain that pie has agriculture, panther, honey, birch terms.(Gamkrelidze&Ivanov)There is no common pie word for horse but many, one of them is clearly Altaic (asva), another one is very close to semitic kabanu.More importantly, have you an idea of the demography of 6000 bc pontic steppes, comparing it with the agricultural middle east, and I think you know R1a is either indian either middle eastern, so even if pie homeland is pontic steppes, proto ih homeland, most likely is in the middle east.

Eurologist, which mittelgebirge (it is a geographical term of German origin) do you mean?

Many cultural and linguistic occurrences in Germany over the past 9 or so millenia can be ordered by some very simple geographic features: there are the Danubian plains north of the Alps, usually culturally associated with at least the northern Alps, then there is a hilly landscape that has some higher mountains and some areas of extremely cold/dry weather, with moderate climate and very fertile valleys distributed at a low density ("Mittelgebirge" - ~600 to ~1,000m; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelgebirge#Mittelgebirge_in_Mitteleuropa), and then the extensive plains north of that, which have a mixture of fertile Loess soils and sandy soils mostly farther north, an have formed a continuing Sprachbund with the North Sea and Baltic Coast probably for the past 4,000 years.

Conversely, the southern regions tended to drift away culturally and language-wise - but probably never enough to make re-unification a major problem.

mr WaggLook, I need more than a few parallels with Afro-asiatic which I don't know how accepted they are by the specialists.

It's rather the contrary, specialists such as Brunner, Bernal, Gamkrelidze&Ivanov and Dolgopolsky accept those parallels/loans.

I read some of their books and it looks convincing, I will try to read the book of Gamkrelidze (more than 1200 pages) and also Lipinsky's semitic languages (more than 750 pages) in the summer, that's all I could add.

When quoting a passage please do it in a recognizable way (e.g., enclosing the quoted passage in quotation/ditto marks, writing it in html italics), otherwise it can be difficult and confusing to understand which parts of your posts are quotes and which parts your replies.

One is a greek supremacist. J2 is the source of knowledge , It is pristine, J2 is the IE culture, J2 is the great culture. It is in Turkey and Iran. So it got to be Greek.Obviously this J2 showed up in 1 study as Upper cast Indians and he try to generalize it for every thing else ignoring other 99999 studies.

One is another Muslim from Iran/Pakistan I doubt he is from other Middle east countries. For him Turkey is the center of the world. So Muslims were at the center of the universe.Lost Ten years of genetic research is bullshit. My dear Ashrafee, out of R1a, R1a1a, R1b, E1b, J2, G2 show me a single group that is originated in Turkey as per any scientific journal.

"One is a greek supremacist. J2 is the source of knowledge , It is pristine, J2 is the IE culture, J2 is the great culture. It is in Turkey and Iran. So it got to be Greek.Obviously this J2 showed up in 1 study as Upper cast Indians and he try to generalize it for every thing else ignoring other 99999 studies.

One is another Muslim from Iran/Pakistan I doubt he is from other Middle east countries. For him Turkey is the center of the world. So Muslims were at the center of the universe.Lost Ten years of genetic research is bullshit. My dear Ashrafee, out of R1a, R1a1a, R1b, E1b, J2, G2 show me a single group that is originated in Turkey as per any scientific journal."

How can some proteins (J2 hg) be a source of knowledge!!!Center of the world is and it is not in TurkeyAs the center of the universe you should ask the NASA.I'am not from pakistan/iran and please call me a human, how you dare call people by their religion.Islam is an ordinary religion just as hinduism, shintoism, judaism nd christianity(and very close to the 2 latter ones)

Also if you can't read the book of Gamkrelidze you can find, many free papers in nostratica.ru of linguists explaining why the homeland of proto indo-european is Anatolia, for example this one:http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(151)mcalpin%20-%20drav%20ela.doc

Just a fantasist claim: please note that the name of the Tocharo-Germans Gutians of northeast Anatolia is similar to Goth and that the northeastern corner of Turkey is renowned for the great amount of Blondes.

Of course all cultures, are equal and their diversity is a chance of us as humans (even if nowadays distinct cultures tend to disappear or at least to converge) but it should not be forgoten that ie and at lesser extent semitic were rather colonialist, plagiaing, absorbing, millitary assimilating&very mixed (both genetically and culturally)cultural processes and entities.

On the other hand we have unique, intrinsic, very rich and not colonialist cultures that predate indo europeans birth such as:EtruscansMinoansCaucasians (Hurri, Urartean...)SumerianChineseAmerindianEgyptianPelasgianNo ie old cultures of Europe (Gravettian etc...)

One is a greek supremacist. J2 is the source of knowledge , It is pristine, J2 is the IE culture, J2 is the great culture. It is in Turkey and Iran. So it got to be Greek.Obviously this J2 showed up in 1 study as Upper cast Indians and he try to generalize it for every thing else ignoring other 99999 studies.

I have never felt any Greek or any other ethnic or racial supremacism (which wouldn't disturb me anyway) from Dieneke. Rather, he seems to uphold a form of philosopher king rule (that also doesn't disturb me).

Ashraf seems to be careful in separating his religious beliefs from his ideas about genetics, linguistics and anthropology (including socio-cultural anthropology).

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